"The head of police has told us that the use of underground chambers as prisons was standard practice but we fear that if there were any they will have been flooded to get rid of the evidence," he said.

Kuwait said today that it was expending every effort with the help of coalition forces to determine the fate of more than 600 people who disappeared during Iraq's 1990-91 occupation of the emirate.

Meanwhile, an intelligence operation was under way to establish if Baghdad had used the Maysan province as a hiding place for any weapons of mass destruction.

The city of Al-Amarah, which played a pivotal role in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein following the last Gulf War, was under occupation today following its descent into the same chaos of destruction and looting as Basra and Baghdad.